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Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

It's not as dubious as you may think. Unless they are actively running their own power plants they have to source the energy from somewhere and they're naturally limited by whatever suppliers feed into the grid. As long as they offset the energy they consume with renewable energy being produced, they're net neutral.

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That's quite a big if. Okay, under the assumption that the energy industry is always honest and never games the system, we have true green energy.

I don't understand why people here try to explain very basic things that just don't work out in the real world as they would in a 9th grade math textbook.

I was arguing based on the assumption that they are indeed doing what you described. RECs would be regulated and "not being honest" in that case would constitute actual fraud.

If it's just a public promise, sure, I wouldn't trust them either, but even then German consumer protection laws would at least require them to either keep that promise or drop that claim (and pay a fine for anti-competitive practices).

> I don't understand why people here try to explain very basic things that just don't work out in the real world as they would in a 9th grade math textbook.

Then please explain to us, what they taught you in 9th grade. Also, why are you hiding behind a throwaway if you are so sure of your points?

They taught me that there's an extraneous comma in your first sentence.

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